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Ted DiBiase Sr. Discusses The Passing of Dusty Rhodes

June 30, 2015 | Posted by Larry Csonka

– Ted DiBiase Sr. recently appeared on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast. Here are the highlightsā€¦

Favorite moments of working Mid-South and his fondest memories: Mid-South is what started my whole career. The owner of Mid-South Wrestling, “Cowboy’ Bill Watts was and is extremely intelligent and unbelievable at understanding the psychology of our industry and I probably learned more from him then just about anybody. Naming all the guys that came from Mid-South (Jake Roberts, Jim Duggan, Junkyard Dog), they didn’t just come out wrestlers they came out as Superstars. I never actually got a chance to wrestle Jake in Mid-South but my biggest move is when I finally turned from “good” guy to “bad” guy on Junkyard Dog. JYD had a tremendous run down there. JYD really is what started me into becoming an accomplished heel.

His infamous ā€œLoser Leaves Townā€ Match with Hacksaw Jim Duggan: Me, Duggan and (Matt) Borne had the Rat Pack. Duggan became a baby face and I had a great run with Hacksaw. The ā€œLoser Leaves Townā€ Match was like the Gimmick Matches of all Gimmick Matches. We were dressed in tuxedos (I have no idea where that came from), we were inside of a steel cage, there was a 12 ft. pole attached to the ring with a loaded coal miners glove that if you got it you could use and on top of all that it was a “Loser Leaves Town” Match.

Mid-South being the first promotion to run in a dome: When you talk about running big venues, obviously the WWE has sold out arenas all over the world throughout the years and it seems like every WrestleMania sets a new record. But, I believe l and I’m not mistaken that the first guy to run a dome was Bill Watts when he ran The Superdome. Obviously he didn’t sell it out but that is probably the largest crowd that I remember wrestling in front of at that time.

Working Jake ā€œThe Snakeā€ Roberts and WrestleMania VI: I loved wrestling Jake all the time. He was easy. As wrestlers call it “doing the dance” and Jake and I dance well together. When you are on the same wavelength and share the same psychology of what a match should be, we had that. I was the heel and Jake was the baby face and it was actually one of the WrestleMania’s where I actually won. But the only reason I won was because post WrestleMania he and I were still going to be working all the time. WrestleMania VI I would say is my favorite WrestleMania match. My first one , WrestleMania IV was the tournament where the champion would be crowned, the last match I had with Randy Savage was a good match and I loved working Randy but Jake is one of those guys I worked so well with.

On the passing of ā€œThe American Dreamā€ Dusty Rhodes: Wrestling lost an unbelievable wrestler and incredible entertainer, but I lost a close friend. My relationship with Dusty goes all the way back to the beginning of my career. I am one of the guys like Dusty that was on the football team at West Texas State. I was there with Tito Santana, Tully Blanchard and a lot of wrestlers came out of West Texas State. I had actually met Dusty at Dick Murdoch’s house in Amarillo, Texas and when I started in the business, Dusty had already had the reputation of being great. A lot of people look at him and say well he had a sloppy body but what you have to understand was Dusty could have a technical match that I’m known for having . Dusty worked his gimmick and that is “the son of a plumber” and that he was the average man and say that I look like the ā€œcommon manā€. When he became NWA World Champion he said to me that “there were a lot of guys that don’ t think I can carry this belt, but I can do it”. When he came to the WWE, Vince (McMahon) made him the guy in polka dots and Dusty didn’t throw a big fit about the whole thing and he took that and did it extremely well. That’s actually the only time we were able to work a real program and I had the opportunity to wrestle Dusty often. I also helped break in his son Dustin and even to this day Cody and my son (Ted Dibiase Jr. ) who were tag team partners are very close friends. My heart goes out to Michelle his wife and those boys.

article topics :

Ted Dibiase, Larry Csonka